I just rechecked (I do it every now and again when the internet world seems very slow!) and it's now put back to 31st March 2012. I have found a few planning applications on the Hertsmere web site for the remote DSLAM cabinets in Bushey but nothing up this way.

I finally had had enough of download speeds of 250kb at the top of Peplins Way and, after working with Sky (who ran tests, sent me a new router etc), they finally sent an Openreach (BT) engineer to investigate. My internal phone point was very old so he replaced it with a whizzy socket that separates the phone from the broadband without need of a splitter and much to my amazement he tested the line at 1.8mb. Now once I hooked up my wireless router I could only get 1.5mb, but still 6 times faster than before. Now sadly the speed has settled back to a consistent 0.6mb which is still much better than it used to be, but I will rattle Sky's cage once more on this. However, the engineer did impart some useful information. He did some work at the junction box which I think involved upgrading some cable. The speed at the junction box - which I understand is somewhere up near the top of Moffats, is 4mb and therefore the best anyone in the village can hope for is this speed, but presumably only if you are (metaphorically) on top of the box. Because the top of Peplins is at least 2km from the box then 1.8mb is likely to the best we far flung BP residents can hope for.

I did wonder if anyone else on Peplins benefitted from the work he did at the box - I know my neighbour is now getting better speeds (similar to my 0.6mb) - I am intrigued why I had a glorious 24 hours at 1.5mb - perhaps if we all pushed our respective service providers then things may keep improving. I use the speed test on Thinkbroadband.com - if you set up an account you can track your speeds over time and you can send the link to your service provider if needed.

I moved into a rented place Essendon and put the BT router where the other chap had his, it took hours to sync up and then only at 448kbps, it was truly awful and dropped in and out (said to be the reason he moved out!). I left it the three days they suggested and it had got no better.

Investigated internal wiring and found this socket (even though it was a BT Ppenreach master) was the last in line - the first was in a bedroom (also an Openreach master). Plugged into the first socket it synced at 2MBPS. I added a central splitter and a router you can tweak the noise margin ratio on and can now sync at 2.2 meg

Check on http://speedtester.bt.com which reveals your sync rate and your IP profile rate. BT's DLM will manage speeds up and down to increase stability. Some routers with some chipsets can over-ride this setting. I'd put up with an unstable line every now and again to get a bit more speed. Sadly this is all automated. Each line has a target SNRM usually around 6dB (you can see this in the stats on the router). Each time you power cycle it, you get a power cut or it drops out, the exchange can instruct the router to connect with 3dB more margin which impacts the connect rate (I find by about 300kbps). You can end up losing half your speed this way if you only sync at 2MBPS!

It should recover after ten days of stability. That for me would have been sunday, but we had a power cut

I see you're on Sky, they might be different and not use the same DLM as BT do but it always seems stability is the answer to better speed, just a shame there isn't a way you can disconnect the router cleanly so the exchange knows it's a planned disconnect.

Just had the BT engineer round to sort my broadband and hes increased my speed from 1mb to 3.5 mb download speed which is great. Mimms drive area. He did this by switching the line pair that we use to another pair and this fixed the issue.

He also issued a new hub which will auto switch wireless channels if there is interference on the current channel

If anyone else has slow speed on bt this may be the way to sort it.

He said BT infinity will be available Mar 2012 and we should expect up to 30mb download in BP area.

BrookyP, how easy was it for you to get a BT technician? Could you contact someone directly in the UK or did you go through the hastle of calling their call centre, which I belive is in India? I have had to go through the call centre, and all they try to do is fix it remotely.

You did better than I did - I tried to explain that power cuts kept taking my line down and up, which drops the speed each time. They then did a line test which took it down and made is slower still, and to try and make it quicker, they wanted to change my wifi channel!!

Someone at work implied calling in the late evening here would get someone in Scotland rather than India, not tried that myself but I think it could be worth a go.

I'm sure though, from a business perspective, the Indian call centre solves and satisfies a high proportion of people but it's the more complex faults that take them away from their idiot sheet which will leave people dissatisfied.

Is March 2012 the time that the much publicised service reaches Potters Bar or when they have laid the cables to the pole outside my house (and everybody else in BP)? Or.... do we still have to wait another couple of years until we join what BT would have us believe, a majority of the rest of the country?

What speed do you synchronise at and what's your SNR margin? I'm south side of Essendon and I normally sync about 1.9MBPS with an IP profile (max rate) of 1.693MBPS (http://www.speedtester.bt.com will give you this).

If your sync speed is the same but your throughput has gone up suggests maybe you've been shifted to a different pipe within the exchange with less load on it or something like that. If your sync speed has gone up perhaps the weather has dried out some cables somewhere.

I saw planning apps for 12 telecommunications cabinets, no details on locations - it might be for Hatfield exchange though - but it might be the long awaited FTTC

My biggest problem is each power cut is assumed by the exchange to be a line fault and it increases the sync margin by 3dB and takes 300kbps off my already slow speed! I did ten days uptime at 1920kbps then a power cut and I was down to 1600. With a few commands into the Netgear I brought it up to 1824. Every little helps ... My quickest is 2.2 meg. Only ADSL1 though, too far for ADSL2+.

If you go onto http://speedtester.bt.com/ it will do a BT speed test but also it reports your BRAS or IP profile which is the maximum throughput you can get.

Does anyone have trouble getting a DSL connection? I've successfully used an old Netgear modem/router for several years. I recently bought a new one to upgrade to a faster wireless network, but the DSL light never comes on - it flashes and then goes off so there is no connection to the broadband provider (Virgin). The old router still works fine.I've had this problem with a Speedtouch modem as well, many years ago, so I don't think it's the new router that's at fault. Has anyone else has come across a similar problem?

Does anyone have trouble getting a DSL connection? I've successfully used an old Netgear modem/router for several years. I recently bought a new one to upgrade to a faster wireless network, but the DSL light never comes on - it flashes and then goes off so there is no connection to the broadband provider (Virgin). The old router still works fine.I've had this problem with a Speedtouch modem as well, many years ago, so I don't think it's the new router that's at fault. Has anyone else has come across a similar problem?

I am also on Virgin and had some problems when swapping to a new router, it turned out there was too much 'hiss' on the line. Called BT and they sent someone round to sort it out. Might be worth calling them, if the problem is outside your house, it's free.

Thanks for your advice.As is the case for everyone in BP the DSL line is long and noisy - BT have fiddled around with it in the past to no great effect.After some investigation on the web it seems that some routers can deal with long and noisy lines better than others, and (more by luck than judgement) my old Netgear DG834G router is one of those that can. The new one (Netgear DGN1000) clearly isn't.I suppose I will just have to stick with the old router for the moment and get BT to sort the line out at some point.

I see SamKnows now has the RFS date as June, and the BT infinity site just says "2012". The long wait continues!

Also in the news today, USwitch has just released data showing the south of the country has slower speeds than the north. They also have StreetStats showing speeds around you, I think this might be the same data as the previous link here but is interesting nevertheless. When I did my test it added my result to the map.

You have to be careful not to take these figures completely at face value.

You could have faulty internal wiring or an old modem or some other problem that would have nothing to do with the ISP.

The general trend is clear from the figures on the Broadband StreetStats site, the further away from the exchange the slower the speeds (in general). Interestingly when I click on figures where I live it says I am 1978 metres away from the exchange which can't be right, even as the crow flies it must be 3km or so.

I use http://www.speedtest.net/ to measure my speed now and again. A good day sees just over 3 Mbps and a bad as low as just over 1 Mbps. Last night I ran a check and wow - 5.9 Mbps coming into BP. This morning it was 5.84 Mbps.